Portrait Among Dementors
by A. Lee
Summary: A slightly dark, slightly unbeta'd DracoPansy featuring Empaths, Dementors, Villains, and Certain Death. As well as lots of dialogue. One-shot.


Lady Marcia was a heroine of her time, a witch who achieved the impossible. She was also blind. Half a century after her martyred death, artists and portraiters were scrambling to find any trace of description of her features, in order to be the one to successfully paint her portrait and bring her to life. In a portrait, that is. Confined forevermore to bounce from picture to picture, obeying the orders of the owner of said portrait. No one really realizes the degradation of being a portrait until they have died and only their spirit remains behind, animating the portrait and giving it life. It is a complicated process. For example, I, the only successfully reanimated portrait of Lady Marcia, know nothing of her life. But I have her personality (or as much as people can ascertain is her personality), and I am blind.

And I also hang in Azkaban. Amongst the Dementors. Luckily, I am not affected by them, as I _have_ no memories beyond that of being created, animated, and sold. But as a result of this proximity to misery and pain (Lady Marcia was an Empath—did I mention that?), I have become immobile. It is an immobility of choice. This way, I can keep my strength for I have no other portrait to escape to—I am the only successfully reanimated portrait of Lady Marcia. As it is, I remain so still that most now believe I am a Muggle portrait, donated to Azkaban by a rich, but foolish benefactor who is too influential to anger by throwing me away.

Still, it makes for the most _interesting_ conversations. Now, for example, I can hear the door creaking open. I am situated in the lobby, and any resident of Azkaban with visitors has to meet them in here. There are footsteps, and the unmistakable stiffness that comes when a prisoner who is accompanied by Dementors enters. There is another creak on the opposite side of the room, as another door opens. Ah, the visitor has entered. And now the Dementors leave, as they are supposed to do.

"Pansy." Soft, almost like a caress.

"Draco." Sharp and curt, yet the slightest bit wistful.

Silence.

"Isn't it ironic-?"

"Yes, I know." Bitterly, now. Filled with self-loathing. "The Dark Lord V. has been defeated and replaced by an equally incompetent and vicious totalitarian government."

Chuckle, malicious now. "I was thinking more along the lines of the fact that those who were actually true Death Eaters escaped with a couple of distributed Galleons while those who were on the 'Light' side ended up here in Azkaban."

"I told you that you chose the wrong side." Regret.

"Perhaps I did." He did not mean that.

"I can still-"

"No, I need no help." Firm. "I can resist the Dementors." A lie. "I do not want you in trouble as well." That was true, at least.

"You don't need to protect me." Harsh and defensive. "I don't _need_ help. At least, not help that _you_ can distribute." Silence. She begins again, slightly more subdued. "I don't need another protector supposedly looking out for my best interests."

Another silence, lengthier and filled with drama and angst.

"Does _he_ know you're here?" Filled with the slightest bit of contempt, self-contempt as well as contempt for the rest of the world as a whole.

An almost audible flinch. "No, please don't-"

"Don't what?" Words tumble out as if he has much pent-up frustration and the dam has finally broken. "Don't mention that going to Azkaban is better than saddling yourself with an old and decrepit, flea-infested, mangy cur of a man who regularly beats you—no, don't hide that bruise from me; I can see it—and keeps you in rags and yells at you and probably casts the Cruciatus on you without the slightest inhibition and probably paws over you at night without a thought about you or any mercy or remorse or consideration for _your_ pleasure but instead doing it until he has what he wants and then turning over and falling asleep and waiting every day for an heir and probably blaming you for not conceiving, though _he_ is probably as impotent as a-"

"Draco, stop." Pleading now. Sobs fill the room. "Please stop."

"I'm sorry." Quietly, and filled with more of the self-loathing an extended stay with the Dementors will bring you. "I had no right to say that. Please don't cry, Pansy."

"I'm pregnant." Whispered. "I'm pregnant, Draco, and I came to tell you because I'm scared."

"But, Pansy, _he'll_ be happy if you're pregnant. And then maybe you'll have more freedom once you have a child."

"But it's not his."

There was another silence.

"How do you know?"

"I cast a Contraceptus each night, before he comes in."

"You what?" Surprised. "But maybe you missed one night, or forgot to."

"I can't take the chance, Draco. If I tell him, he'll immediately cast the Paternus, and if it's not his, he'll kill me. You know he will."

"If it's not his, whose is it?"

"Yours."

"But, I­-"

"You make me cast Obliviate each time we part. Because you said you don't want the Dementors to have the memory. Each time."

"You mean …"

Silence yet again, but one filled with heavy breathing. Finally, a chair scrapes against the floor.

"Pansy, I do love you, you know."

"Oh, Draco, what am I going to do?"

There is yet another pause, and then he hesitantly begins. "There is a place."

"Yes?" Dully.

"The … Potter's crowd hides there."

"What?" Surprise.

"I-" His voice wavers. "It's is the only thing I managed to keep from them. The inquisitors. Where Potter and his friends hide."

"And … you think they might help me?"

"They will. If you tell them 'Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus.'"

"The school motto."

"Yes. It … It's at-" and he whispers something into her ear.

"Really?"

"Yes. But whatever you do, don't tell _them_."

There is a sudden sound as the doors open and what sounds like thousands of heavy boots rush inside. There is also the coldness that comes with the Dementors.

"What-"

"Ah, Malfoy." This voice is oily and superior. "What you would not tell under the most refined of tortures you will tell to a pretty young face."

"What? Pansy? No …"

"Yes." Soft, insistent laughter. "She has tricked your last secret out of you. Perform the kiss."

"No!" There are screams and kicks as he is dragged, and then, there is the gasp as the Dementor must have unhooded himself. Then, there is silence.

"Take his body away. Throw it into the sea."

Feet shuffle to obey the command.

"And Pansy. I'm very proud of you. That lie you told him, in particular, was a work of genius. Come over here so I can kiss you for your good work." The man was _audibly_ leering.

"No." Simply.

"What?" Astonished.

"You said that if I did this for you, I could leave."

"Yes, but you surely meant leaving for the summer, to the Bahamas maybe."

"I will leave for good."

"Impossible. Why would you want to leave?"

"Because I did not lie."

"What on Earth are you talking about?"

"I did not lie about the baby. Or the baby's father."

"What? You mean …"

There is another silence, this one filled with hostility and mounting anger.

"No woman of mine _cheats_ on me."

"Well, _I_ certainly did."

_Avada Kedavra_

It is surprising how two such seemingly simple words can bring loss of life. Two words that almost twist the parody of the childish Muggle incantation "Abracadabra."

Another door opens.

"Ah, I hear you have extracted the final piece of information from young Malfoy?"

"Sir." Much groveling and fawning. "It is a pleasure to be here before you. I am honored by your presence."

"Of course. Now, what is it?"

"What?"

"The last piece of information."

Silence.

"Shit." Under his breath.

"What was that?"

"I mean, I don't know, sir."

The man had forgotten to ask his (I presume) wife exactly _where_ "Potter and his friends" congregated. If I had had any energy in me, I would have laughed. As it was, I remain immobile.

"Why not? I was under the impression that you had tricked the information out of him."

"He did, um; he whispered it into my wife's ear. And then, when we came in, there was, um, a great commotion. He, uh, killed my wife with, er, a stolen wand and a Dementor kissed him, uh, during the melee. So I'm afraid the information is lost." Apologetic and fearful. "I'll be sure to punish the Dementor." Weakly.

"Hmm …" He drew out the sound, audibly skeptical. "Somehow, I doubt that. Either way, you foiled a surprisingly simple plan. For that, I'm afraid, you must pay."

_Crucio_

There are many screams and cries of pain and much flailing of limbs. Finally, the screams end.

"I trust you will do better next time."

"I will, I will."

Then one set of footsteps leave. After a long pause, there is a sound of man getting up. Before he leaves, he kicks something. (I presume it was the girl's body.) "Stupid bitch."

Then there is silence.

No one comes to retrieve the girl's body until morning. I imagine it must have been dumped into the sea as the boy's was. I never did find out if she really was pregnant or whether she was provoking her husband. I never did find out what happened to that husband in the end. I do hope that somewhere, though, a boy and a girl, dead though they may be, are together, in life or death.

I do find it curious that after the Dementor's kiss, I could hear a barely audible voice whisper, "Pansy." Which is of course, entirely impossible, as his soul had left his body by that time, and there was no way any trace of consciousness could have remained. It is just as unlikely as that barely-audible, "Draco," I heard in the room after the fatal words of the Killing Curse left the lips of the oily-voiced man. After all, the Killing Curse kills immediately. No time for last words. My hearing may be acute and oversensitive, but I, as any other, am sometimes a victim of that thing called "imagination." And an overactive imagination can certainly lead one to imagine all sorts of things.

Especially when one hangs around Dementors, as I do.

It has now been several weeks since that incident, and things at Azkaban are back to normal. But _I_ certainly shall never forget that … peculiar, I suppose that's the best word, conversation.

Fin.


End file.
